


Of Maps and Memories

by bendingwind



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-15
Updated: 2010-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:16:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She keeps a map of the TARDIS, the only place she knows better than her own body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Maps and Memories

**Author's Note:**

> prompt by [](http://promethia-tenk.livejournal.com/profile)[**promethia_tenk**](http://promethia-tenk.livejournal.com/) for the [](http://spoiler-song.livejournal.com/profile)[**spoiler_song**](http://spoiler-song.livejournal.com/) ficathon, _River + TARDIS, A Partial Map of Your TARDIS (Subject to Change)_. A great deal of credit, of course, goes to [A Partial Map of Your TARDIS (Subject to Change)](http://community.livejournal.com/dwfiction/2794749.html).

Across several pages of River’s beloved diary, there are scribbled maps and scrawling descriptions of incredible places, and unlike the rest of the extraordinary events described therein, these are drawn carefully with painstaking detail rather than gleefully jotted down an messily illustrated. They are different—these are the places she explored within the TARDIS. These are their places, filled with memories and peace and longing.

Every drop of ink put into those oh-so-precious maps is a memory to be cherished.

***

The first two pages of her journal are mostly black and white, with a slightly messy blue circle sprawled across the center to indicate the TARDIS’ console. Neatly written out in the bottom corner is the title _Floor Zero._

There is a tiny circle for the chair the Doctor dropped her into while he treated a nasty cut on her arm after he rescued her from the particularly dangerous kittens of the Regis Corona. Afterwards, she often complained about how it had disappeared except when she looked out of the corner of her eye. “Where am I supposed to sit,” she asked, “while you fiddle about uselessly with all those buttons?” There are also two carefully placed dots for the repair kit and the first aid, which she had reason to become intimately familiar with over the course of her time with the Doctor.

There are marks in different ink indicating the different areas of the back rooms, added as she slowly became familiar with them. She once joked, the first time she entered the Doctor’s room, that she wanted to mark it in shiny gold ink but was afraid it would make her seem too much like a lovelorn teenager. He had laughed at that. It, like almost everything on these precious pages, is marked in plain black ink.

***

The next map was once red, but a reaction with some strange radiation when they visited the Medusa Cascade turned entirely to shades of grey. Nonetheless, that in and of itself is a memory of a beautiful day spent sitting just outside the TARDIS, staring at the stars. It was the first time she’d worked up the courage to slip her hand shyly into the Doctor’s, and she’d been so thrilled when his beautiful fingers had briefly squeezed her hand before he left go. She’d related the event to him from her perspective later, and he had smiled a real smile, one that spread across his face and into his beautiful eyes.

The map itself was always one of her favorites, and it catalogues most of the vast library inside the TARDIS. There is a careful label on every section she ever visited, some for research and some for more… _interesting…_ purposes. She even wrote down a section especially for Spoilers, where his companion diary was kept. She never did read it, though she often remarked that she wished she could. However, spoilers were spoilers, and there were some things she said she’d rather not know before they happened.

***

Floor 17-J, as she often remarked with disgust, was her absolutely least favorite floor. He’d teased her that that was only the case because she got lost there so often. Precisely because of that, however, her map is incredibly detailed despite the fact that the floor is the size of a small continent.

The truth, which she told him only later, was that she’d spent a horrible night crying at the Valley of Regret over a horrible mistake, and because he’d once told her he’d played there as a child sometimes. She hated to imagine a ghost of him playing in the ruins, she’d explained with a shudder.

***

Farther back in the diary is another map of which she is particularly proud, and it depicts one of her favorite floors. The recreation donut thing has a swimming pool that, though it is no longer located in the library, reflects words swimming in the water when the light from the artificial sun hits it just right. There are other memories, in particular the time there was a leak of corobrium oil (an aphrodisiac to Time Lords, he’d explained defeatedly later) at the precise time they went swimming. If River engineered the leak on purpose, she never said.

She was also quite fond of bringing up the horrible old Earth game, Laser Tag, and mocking him because she always won. He generally harrumped and said that shooting people was not a skill to be proud of, but sometimes he’d let her tutor him a little. He admitted shyly that it was an excellent excuse to touch her.

(There’s also a story involving the sandbox, but it’s utterly mortifying and resulted in several days spent in the recovery room, and she always hated to talk about it.)

***

The shipyard is precisely mapped out because she always placed great importance on being able to obtain whatever she wanted from it, whenever she wanted (flying saucers in particular were a favorite when they were on Earth and she had to leave). She’d also used the harpoons to great effect at least twice.

Most precious, however, was the time when she found the area where wings were manufactured, and he took her flying above the Painted Clouds of Olympus. The clouds were soft blue and white and a golden yellow-orange that day, and she reverently said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She always closed her eyes in memory when the subject was mentioned, and a small peaceful smile would grace her face. He brought it up only rarely, perhaps from fear that if overused the effect would lessen.

***

The Aether is almost more of a drawing than a map, but there are fond memories of that place nonetheless. In particular, they’d spent an afternoon picnicking in the hot air balloon (aether-repelling proton-driven docking bay, he’d explained exasperatedly on more than one occasion) and it was a blissfully peaceful day in the midst of mild chaos, and though neither of them mention it afterward, they both remember.

***

Floor Tuesday is arguably the most beautiful in the TARDIS, and that is perhaps exactly what makes it so very easy to hate, according to River. She mapped out all but one tiny grave in dutiful detail, and she never returned there again. She was not one to dwell on the past, she explained, when he asked why she stayed away. He spent at least a quarter of an hour there every day, because it was the closest he had to graves to mourn over.

Nonetheless, he once mentioned that he preferred to stay on the empty isle as often as he could, because so much of the rest was too painful to bear.

***

The TARDIS itself drew a map of Floor 12 for her, when the Doctor deemed it too dangerous for her to visit. She dwelt on it often, but there were special circumstances and for once she listened to him and never visited.

***

Floor Ampersand is beautiful and dark and dangerous and was her absolute favorite place in the TARDIS. There are many memories of this place, which for him mostly involved tripping over tree roots and low garden walls as he searched for her. For her, they mostly involved wandering aimlessly in Wander or sitting, quiet and heartbroken, in the Dark Woods. Sometimes, very rarely, she would sit in the peaceful meadows of Quiet Reflection, near the pond, and let herself be at peace. He always did his best not to disturb her when she was there, but sometimes he would carefully lie down beside her and rest his head in her lap, and they would be at peace together.

***

The only other map she ever makes the TARDIS supply for her is that of Floor Last, the catacombs. She was not averse to scrambing through mud and worse for a cause, but she said she had absolutely no intention of ever entering that rats’ warren without a good reason. She did force him down there in pursuit of a pet Krill she picked up on Olaku once, though, and she laughed for a minute straight when he emerged, tiny Krill in hand and covered with custard.

He’s muttered that it hadn’t been so bad and offered her the Krill, which she had refused on the grounds that it, also, was covered in slightly rotten custard. He’d washed it and presented it to her again, and she’d finally agreed to take it.

She sold the silly thing on Minos Aurelia three weeks later, and he was irrationally disappointed.

***

The next floor, which does not even have a name, may or may not exist. She’d only found it once, and had only a brief glimpse before she woke up four hours later on the deck of the console. A ridiculously detailed and complicated map was scrawled across the pages of her journal, and she’d explained that she had no recollection of writing it.

He’d shrugged and said that things like that sometimes happened. When she’d asked whether or not it was real, he’d only been able to answer, _It depends._

***

There’s a menu and a shuttle schedule near the back, neither of which she ever mentions to him, but that she uses so she knows which days she needs to pick something up on a neighboring planet and bring it home for dinner. Fish custard is simply _not_ fit for human consumption, according to River. He chuckles when he finally sees them, tucked between other tales of their adventures.

***

The thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor, ancient even for a Time Lord, smiles softly as he sets the aged blue journal down among the other treasures he’s kept from every companion he’s ever had, and he leans his head back on his pillow and closes his eyes. Slowly, the gentle beat of his two hearts fades away.

* * *


End file.
